Abstract/Summary

By 2030, the world’s human population could rise to 8 billion people and
world food demand may increase by 50%. Although food production
outpaced population growth in the 20th century, it is clear that the
environmental costs of these increases cannot be sustained into the future.
This challenges us to re-think the way we produce food. We argue that
viewing food production systems within an ecosystems context provides
the basis for 21st century food production. An ecosystems view recognises
that food production systems depend on ecosystem services but also have
ecosystem impacts. These dependencies and impacts are often poorly
understood by many people and frequently overlooked. We provide an
overview of the key ecosystem services involved in different food production
systems, including crop and livestock production, aquaculture
and the harvesting of wild nature. We highlight the important ecosystem
impacts of food production systems, including habitat loss and degradation,
changes to water and nutrient cycles across a range of scales, and
biodiversity loss. These impacts often undermine the very ecosystem
services on which food production systems depend, as well as other
ecosystem services unrelated to food. We argue that addressing these
impacts requires us to re-design food production systems to recognise
and manage the limitations on production imposed by the ecosystems
within which they are embedded, and increasingly embrace a more multifunctional
view of food production systems and associated ecosystems. In
this way, we should be able to produce food more sustainably whilst
inflicting less damage on other important ecosystem services.